Anyone want their own SST clone?

That's the craziest EBay ad I have ever seen. I love it.

 

You would need your own refinery to fuel that thing. Wonder if the National Museum of the USAF would be interested?

 

I highly doubt it would ever be allowed back in the air. It would cost millions of dollars just to get it close to flying condition.

 

This is one of hundreds of reasons why you don't want to fly a TU-144 again. From the beginning this is what they found in testing.

The aircraft was assembled from parts machined from large blocks and panels, many over 19 m (62 ft) long and 0.64 to 1.27 m (2.1 to 4.2 ft) wide. While at the time, this approach was heralded as an advanced feature of the design, it turned out that large whole-moulded and machined parts contained defects in the alloy's structure that caused cracking at stress levels below those which the part was supposed to withstand. Once a crack started to develop, it spread quickly for many metres, with no crack-arresting design feature to stop it.[26] In 1976, during repeat-load and static testing at TsAGI (Russia's Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute), a Tu-144S airframe cracked at 70% of expected flight stress with cracks running many metres in both directions from their origin.

DOOMED FROM THE BEGINNING

 

They must have built that building in the pic AFTER the plane was parked...

The NASA Tu-144 was auctioned for $11M a number of years ago, but it never went through. They wouldn't let the engines out of the country... military secret.

(NASA 'leased' one of them for a couple years to conduct research. US NASA pilots even flew a couple of flights. NASA required them to use different engines as the regular ones were so unreliable.)

There were only about 50 passenger flights and 150 cargo flights in it's entire career. It was incredibly unreliable. Something went wrong on almost every flight.

The goal of the program was to beat Concorde to first flight and they cut so many corners to do that, that they ended up with a terribly flawed aircraft.
It's debut at the Paris Air Show ended in a crash into a residential neighborhood, killing many.

 

Whats the full story behind the Nasa flights, did the plane work, how did they get t back in the air? how many flights.

 

Even Russian oligarchs who have access to the engines won't bother. It's a cool ornament though.

 

Here is a YouTube video of Tu-144's from the present day.

Images of the one on sale come up first. You can see the quality of the article on sale in close-up photos.

https://youtu.be/khRX7s8fYA4

 

And lets not forget the abandoned Soviet space shuttles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9hNoCNYxgQ

The Concorde is a soft spot for me. I have a 9 foot travel display model hanging in my garage.

 

Some of them were still flying then. They had to install better engines to meet NASA requirements.


https://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/TU-144/index.html

 

The one pictured in the Ebay ad is this one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIFjvMjzBNg

The guys turn on some of the features of the plane like the nose positioning, wipers, etc.

 

Those wipers are really loud.

 

Sounds like a cheap electric toothbrush from the 80's.

It probably is a cheap electric toothbrush from the 80's.

 

Impressive that some of that stuff still works (or worked in 2009, anyway). That must be hydraulic?

 

interesting e-bay profile, feedback of 1 for a $750 item

 

Was more impressive many years back when they had their prototype space shuttle on ebay.

I REALLY miss the days when ebay had a category called "Big Ticket," that was just crammed with insane items.